Tiny black dots on a mattress and box spring are evidence of some unwelcome visitors at the Pecan Hills apartments in North Austin: bed bugs.
Joshua Swatosh, who is blind and has cerebral palsy, unknowingly woke up with them just before 5 a.m. Tuesday.
“I called my neighbor because she's got sight, and I knew there had to be something here.” Swotosh said. “And she saw it was everywhere. And I'm like, ‘oh no.’”
Swatosh's neighbor Rosana Price says her apartment, which shares a common wall with Swatosh, is also infested. She came to his rescue right away.
“Oh my gosh, it was worse than me,” Price said. “He was laying on top of the bed. They were everywhere. I mean, they were on his sheets, his pillows, everything.”
Price says her ordeal began last week.
“They were crawling, all down my arm,” she says.
Pecan Hills is a HUD apartment complex. All of the residents there are disabled. Many of them are blind, which makes the bedbug problem that much more difficult to deal with.
“The lady across the hall, she's blind too, just like Josh,” Price said. “And she's all bit up from the thighs down. So I went over there this morning. She does have droppings all around her bed.”
Price, who suffers with permanent knee and back injuries, says residents feel helpless and frustrated. Their apartment caretaker is on leave.
Price says, “We complain and nothing gets done. That's our main complaint; just getting something done so we can live here.”
A manager for the company showed up while KVUE was there. She could not speak on camera, but vowed to exterminate in the next 48 hours.
Before exterminators can treat the units, Price and Swatosh must de-clutter their apartments, a difficult task for anyone, especially people living with disabilities.
